New Beginnings
by sohypothetically
Summary: Katniss's feelings for Peeta develop as she moves into the Victor's Village. Rated M. One Shot. May be read in conjunction with Intimate Portraits as a two shot with this as the first Chapter.


Prompts in Panem: Victor's Village

_Summary: _Katniss's feelings for Peeta develop as she moves into the Victor's Village.

_Rating: _M

_Triggers: _sexual imagery, masturbation

_Prompt:_ Victor's Village

_I do not own The Hunger Games._

_-o—_

Katniss hears the rumors; how could she not? They are everywhere that Fall before the Victory Tour. Girls in the district seem to save them up for when she goes to town to get supplies or window shop when she is bored. She hears them in line at the mercantile, or even at the train station. Anywhere there are young women, she feels their stares and whispered confessions. She feels unclean when she hears them, itchy and warm and guilty somehow. Not just because she shouldn't be eavesdropping but because she is the reason the rumors exist at all – or so she tells herself.

They aren't about her. Oh, no. That would be easy to deal with. The rumors are about Peeta Mellark, her Hunger Games partner and fellow Victor.

She hears about his skin smelling like sugar and nutmeg. About his gifted tongue and nimble fingers. His soft artist's hands with baking callouses as they rub against bare skin. How even his new prosthetic leg does not affect his talented hips as he takes them. They talk about how he likes to hear his name when a girl reaches her peak at the mercy of his fingers or tongue or the rest of him. One girl even talks about how he likes to watch as he plows into her, holding her apart with his fingers and touching her while she pants breathlessly and grabs on his shoulders.

Katniss turns away, of course. She would cover her ears if she could to block out hearing about them – about him. She hasn't spoken to him since leaving the train after their Hunger Games victory. She purposefully avoids even his family's bakery, except out of necessity. Every memory of him is tainted by guilt when she recalls the exact moment he discovered it was all an act for her. His face. The slump of his shoulders. His blue, blue eyes.

She spends her time hunting in the woods trying to run and shoot memories of The Games out of her head. The rumors give her another reason to run and shoot. She doesn't like to think about them at all but she can't get them out of her head, no matter how much running and hunting she does. She thinks about the boy from school, the boy before the Games. She thinks about all that he did for her, from the bread to holding her hand during the Tribute Parade, to training with her, to confessing his love for her to the entire nation so she could live. _So she could live._

She has nightmares. In her new house, large and quiet, she finally has a room to herself; a space of her own. No matter how much running and hunting and digging and shooting she does, Katniss discovers that nighttime brings a particular challenge. She can't sleep, not without nightmares. And some of those nightmares…well, they aren't really nightmares, if she is honest with herself. She replays her time with Peeta in the cave to the soundtrack of whatever she's heard about him. She thinks about the kiss where she first felt some sort of hunger for him in the context of hands and fingers and his oh-so-talented tongue. _On her._ Of his hands caressing her face and then moving lower. Of hips against hips, straining in a shared sleeping bag. Of a boy not near death at all, flushed not with fever, but with a hot hunger as he drives into her.

It makes her restless in a way she never could be in their old house where she shared a bed with Prim. She finds her own hands roaming her body as she thinks of him, doing things to herself she never even thought of doing before. She shatters over and over with his name on her lips until it takes only moments for the fantasy of his lips on hers, his fingers stroking her, to make golden sunlight appear behind her eyelids as she whispers his name. She falls easily into sleep afterward.

It's another gift he's given her and she hates him for it. She hates _herself_ for it.

So when Gale kisses her in the forest, she is surprised but greedy. She understands Gale. She is his and he is hers. He tastes of oranges and she greedily eats it up, thankful that Gale is real and solid next to her. But that night, the muscle and sinew and pressure of his lips (although thrilling) pales in comparison to the things Peeta's hands and mouth and body do to her in her dreams. It is still Peeta's name, not Gale's torn from her in a breathless gasp of frantic relief.

She begins to dodge seeing Peeta at all. Living in the Victor's Village makes it difficult, but it's not impossible. She can't meet his eyes when they do cross paths for fear that he will read the guilt and sheer wanting on her face. What would she do if he actually _knew_? The thought burns through her even as her hands dance below the waistband of her panties.

One silvery gray cloudy day, Katniss is up early and hunting in the forest. Her haul is promising as animals forage purposefully to fatten up before winter. The promised storm rolls and cuts her day short. She runs back to the Meadow, dodges the fence, and heads back to the Victor's Village at a quick clip. The rain is cold and falling relentless and she wants nothing more than a shower and some tea. She needs the physical exhaustion that hunting brings so she will have to figure out something else to do today or sleep tonight may not come at all.

The Victory Tour is fast approaching and the dread fills her as quickly as the need she feels each night. She knows she will see the families of children she has killed. She is not sure how she will get through the visits to each district. But the worse thing , the thing that haunts her, is the fact that she will see Peeta every day. Hold hands. Feel his body next to hers and smell him. Kiss those lips. She has no idea how she is going to be in that sort of proximity to him every day and keep her fantasies limited to only the nighttime hours.

She is jogging back to her house when she sees something – a golden light – coming from Peeta's house. It catches her eye as she crosses his property to get to hers and she finds herself slowing despite the cold rain making a trail down her back. She finally comes to a tentative stop across from his kitchen window.

The room is bathed in a warm golden glow, welcoming and clean. She can see the entire kitchen: it's like hers but unique in its own ways. The maple cabinets are the same, the cavernous island in the center with its granite countertop. But the table with its comfortable chairs, bowl of fruit centerpiece and the custom built brick oven are different. Where her kitchen has glass doors on some of the cabinets, his do not. Where hers is neat and clean as an operating room, his looks comfortably lived in, as if he lives and breathes this room. As if this room is _him._

The ingredients on the counter make it obvious that he is baking something. The brick oven is putting out more golden glow – it must be warm inside the room – when Peeta returns from elsewhere in the house. Katniss draws in a breath sharply because Peeta is not wearing a shirt. His skin is made golden by the light of the oven above the white apron he wears over lounge pants. His chest and arms show muscles as he kneads the dough in front of him while lost in his own thoughts.

Katniss feels warm despite the rain that is quite cold against her neck and shirt, running underneath her hunting jacket. She watches his hands knead the dough, notices the play of his fingers, the rhythmic motion. She gasps as he pinches off a piece and seems to test it for something, then resumes the kneading motion. The play of muscles in his arms and chest and shoulders make her want to run her hands across his bare skin.

She imagines how warm it is in that room. It smells like warm flour and yeast and perhaps a little sugar. His skin is soft and tastes like flour and his soap when she licks his spine as he kneads the dough. Quickly, though, she envisions that he has pushed the dough aside and it is her naked body on the countertop that he masterfully strokes; plucking and alternating soft, gentle tugs with more urgent ones. She imagines his hands set a certain rhythm as they stroke her, imagines his mouth finding hers as she screams his name. Her breath comes in gasps that have nothing at all to do with her run from the forest.

Her eyes move from his hands to his face.

He is wrapped up in whatever he is thinking and he looks so, so sad. It's as if he is trying to use the kneading as an escape, like her hunting is for her. It is necessary for them both. She wonders what his face would look like if she were to walk into his kitchen, dripping wet as she is right now, and wordlessly put herself in front of him. Would he take what she offered, like all of the other girls that talk about him? Would he let her touch his skin, learn the contours of his body in the warm light?

She closes her eyes, unable to bear the thought. She already is going to have this scene etched in her memory so she can replay it tonight. She makes her way back to her own house and discovers how Peeta's name sounds as it echoes in the shower.

_Fin._


End file.
